NEW ORLEANS — An hour and a half after Ohio State’s 64-62 loss to Kansas ended, a weary colleague on press row made a weak stab at small talk. While he packed away his laptop computer, he offered an observation that to him must have seemed as obvious as the smell of stale beer on Bourbon Street on Sunday morning.

“Well, the one thing we know is that these guys won’t be in the Final Four next year.”

He spoke of the Buckeyes, and his logic seemed, well, logical. Senior William Buford will be gone, and if sophomores Jared Sullinger and Deshaun Thomas turn pro, as many expect, then it is hard to see OSU making another run to the NCAA semifinals with the mostly inexperienced players who are left.

But what’s funny is that I remember being served the same kind of wisdom by a press-row colleague after the Buckeyes lost to Kentucky last year in the Sweet 16, and I might have even agreed with him. That team was losing senior starters David Lighty, Jon Diebler and Dallas Lauderdale, and it only seemed logical — there’s that word again — that the Buckeyes had blown their best chance to go deep into the tournament. Even if Buford, Sullinger and point guard Aaron Craft returned, it seemed clear the new team would have some weak spots the previous one didn’t.

Maybe that makes me one of the doubters Sullinger has talked about so much lately, although somebody should remind him that when the Buckeyes lost three out of five games during a stretch in February, the players weren’t exactly predicting big things for themselves, either.

Those are all just words, anyway. For whatever reason, an OSU team that didn’t seem likely to be here a year ago won 31 games and played Kansas in the Final Four on Saturday night, and it was one missed three-point shot away from playing Kentucky for the national championship.

The problem is that in today’s college basketball, what seems logical often isn’t. Young talent has taken over the sport, and we don’t know what we don’t know. In the Buckeyes’ case, that turned out to be a lot: We didn’t know Deshaun Thomas would become a scoring machine who rivaled Sullinger, or that he would go from defensive matador to — in some instances, at least — a shutdown defender. We didn’t know that Lenzelle Smith Jr. was such a clutch player, or that Evan Ravenel was good enough to spell a foul-hampered Sullinger and keep the team hitting on all cylinders.

Over the course of the season, this team evolved into a one that actually deserved the No. 3 ranking that voters had given it as a free pass in the preseason because of the return of Sullinger, a team that was much better than the one that struggled to score against the Jayhawks in the second half on Saturday.

From where we stand now, next season’s Ohio State team is a bigger mystery than this one was, in part because some think that Thomas’ underwhelming game — he shot 3 of 14 from the field and spent long stretches on the bench in foul trouble — might have increased the chances of him returning for another season.

Whether he does, the Buckeyes have some of that “young talent” that described Thomas a year ago and makes next season’s team a bit of a wild card. Center Amir Williams and forward LaQuinton Ross, who will be sophomores in 2012-13, have a high upside, and they might be poised to make that significant, Thomas-style leap in one season. Freshman guard Shannon Scott and forward Sam Thompson showed flashes of their potential late in the season.

The Buckeyes will be a different team next year if Sullinger goes to the NBA and a much different team if Thomas joins him. But no matter what happens with them, the returning team should have no shortage of talent.

Unproven talent makes the future harder to predict, but it shouldn’t be discounted just because the prevailing “logic” demands something else.

If there’s “one thing we know,” it’s that we don’t know. If this season taught us anything, it should be that.